public-safety
(9)
Armando Torres
Armando Torres is the co-founder and CEO of KARDA, Inc., a San Francisco AI startup that turns body-camera footage and other media into court-ready police reports in minutes. A Stanford-trained chemical engineer, Gates Scholar, and Milken Scholar from Paramount, California, he pivoted from energy and biomedical R&D to building CJIS-compliant generative AI that aims to give officers back hours of their shift. KARDA has worked with U.S. agencies including the Boston Police Department and raised a $200K seed round in 2024.
Michael Green
Michael Green is the CEO and co-founder of Athena Security, an Austin-based company that builds AI-powered concealed weapons detection systems for schools, hospitals, casinos, and other public spaces. A Harvard-educated former family-business operator turned compliance-software builder, Green pivoted into physical security after surviving a close encounter with gunfire. He leads a roughly 110-person company that has raised $18.6 million to keep guns out of the places where people gather.
Wyly Wade
Wyly Wade is the CEO of Biometrica Systems (also operating as Safience), a Las Vegas and Virginia-based company that links physical and digital information to help prevent crime, identify threats, and recover victims. A self-taught coder who published his first video game at age ten and fixed a bug in Lotus Notes 4 while barely out of his teens, Wade has spent more than two decades at the intersection of biometrics, cybersecurity, and public policy. He helped build biometric standards for the U.S. passport, advised the ICAO on e-passports, and was part of the founding core team behind India's Aadhaar, the largest biometric identity program on Earth. Today he is pushing Biometrica toward a privacy-first, biometric-free model of threat and victim detection.
Francisco Aguilar
Francisco Aguilar is the founder and CEO of Bounce Imaging, the company behind a softball-sized, throwable 360-degree camera that lets police, firefighters and soldiers see inside dangerous spaces before stepping into them. He conceived the idea as a graduate student at MIT and Harvard after watching rescuers struggle to find survivors in the rubble of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The original Explorer earned a spot on TIME's Best Inventions of 2012; the thermal-equipped Pit Viper 360 repeated the honor in 2024. Today his cameras are used by 300-plus police and fire departments and by defense customers including U.S. Special Operations Command.
Ben Rudolph
Ben Rudolph is the co-founder of Peregrine Technologies, a San Francisco-based public safety data platform that raised $190M at a $2.5B valuation in 2025. A Stanford Computer Science graduate and former NCAA gymnastics All-American, Rudolph pivoted from Silicon Valley offers to spend two years building humanitarian tech for UNHCR's refugee camps before co-founding Peregrine with his college gymnastics teammate Nick Noone. Today, Peregrine's platform serves law enforcement agencies covering more than 80 million Americans, unifying fragmented data from body cameras, dispatch records, and crime databases into a single real-time intelligence system.
Sonia Kastner
Sonia Kastner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Pano AI, a San Francisco-based climate technology company building AI-powered wildfire early detection and response infrastructure. Combining 360-degree mountaintop cameras, satellite imagery, and deep learning AI with a 24/7 human intelligence center, Pano AI monitors 24-30 million acres across the U.S., Australia, and Canada - alerting first responders to over 100 fires annually. Named to TIME's 100 Most Influential Companies of 2025, recognized on BBC's 100 Women 2023, and a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, Kastner brings a Harvard physics degree, Stanford MBA, and deep hardware/supply chain experience from Nest, PAX, and NYC government to the frontier of climate resilience.
Manlio Allegra
Manlio Allegra is the co-founder, President, and CEO of Polaris Wireless, a Silicon Valley company he built from the ground up in 1999 to become the global leader in high-accuracy, software-based 3D mobile location solutions. With over 30 years of international business experience spanning video games, Sega Enterprises' European expansion, and wireless technology, Allegra has guided Polaris Wireless to secure 90+ patents, earn multiple Frost & Sullivan awards, and sign landmark E911 Z-axis agreements with major U.S. carriers - helping emergency dispatchers locate people not just on a map, but on the right floor of a building.
Adam Bry
Adam Bry is co-founder and CEO of Skydio, the leading U.S. drone manufacturer and world leader in autonomous flight. A childhood R/C aerobatics national champion turned MIT robotics researcher, he turned down a DJI acquisition in 2014 to bet everything on autonomy — and won. Today Skydio has deployed over 60,000 drones to every branch of the U.S. military, 1,200+ public safety agencies, and 45 of 51 state transportation departments, with a $4.4 billion valuation and $3.5 billion U.S. manufacturing expansion underway.
Nick Noone
Nick Noone is the co-founder and CEO of Peregrine, a San Francisco-based public safety data platform that unifies fragmented law enforcement data into a single system for real-time search, analysis, and decision-making. A Stanford-trained economist and statistician and former Palantir executive who led special operations data systems used by 18,000+ personnel across six continents, Noone co-founded Peregrine in 2017 to bring the same data-activation philosophy to local law enforcement. By early 2025, Peregrine had raised $250 million - including a $190M Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a $2.5 billion valuation - and serves agencies covering more than 80 million Americans.